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This series showcases personal stories of addiction recovery and sobriety. Today’s edition features Rachel Van Dolsen, a PR consultant, writer, and mother of two based just outside New York City. In her newsletter, Close Enough to Burn, she explores sobriety, parenthood, creativity, and building a life that feels uniquely yours. She’s working on a novel that explores many of these same themes.

I’ve known I had a drinking problem since my early 20s, even if academic and professional success made it easy to disguise. Unfortunately, knowing and quitting turned out to be two very different things. Over almost two decades, I managed an embarrassing number of false starts: a dry January here, a “no drinking on weeknights” rule there, a few stretches of thirty days, and two full term pregnancies.

Part of what made quitting so difficult was that I’d always been susceptible to the siren song of a wild night out. I viewed alcohol as a portal to magic. A glass of wine would reliably turn off the part of my brain that was cataloging people’s reactions, tallying the shoulds, and managing how I moved through a room. I believed drinking made me funnier and more relaxed, able to talk to a stranger at a party like we were lifelong pals.

Unfortunately, the portal only opened one way. I could get in, but I couldn’t get out on my own terms. One drink became three, five, whatever, which often summoned a demon version of myself I didn’t recognize. The “fun” nights started costing more than they were worth.

I stopped for good in February 2025. My last drink was a double rum punch at an airport bar in Turks and Caicos, which I slurped down like water. It wasn’t exactly a gritty rock bottom, though I’d had plenty of those over the years. The trip had unraveled on its own: I had to deal with legal stress from the sale of my PR company, my four-year-old daughter got very sick with tonsillitis, and what was supposed to be a vacation turned into an expensive nervous breakdown with an ocean view.

But something was different this time. I was so, so sick of myself. Sick of the excuses, the headaches, the negotiating, the sense that my husband and kids weren’t getting the best of me. I decided I was done, once and for all.

It finally stuck. I’m still a little in awe that I, of all people, really don’t drink.

Since college, when I was already burning the candle at both ends, I’d nursed a fantasy that one day a friend or family member would show up at my apartment, inform me that my life had been paused, and dispatch me to rehab. The logistics would already be handled, the hard conversations out of the way.

I owned the Sandra Bullock B-movie 28 Days on DVD and watched it at least a hundred times. Sandra plays a sarcastic writer who hijacks her sister’s wedding, is smacked with a DUI, and is sent to rehab as part of her court sentence. She rails against her fate, but eventually admits she’s a mess, does the inner work, and gets sober. I’m sure I was the only person in America who envied her character. Not the crash out necessarily, but the forced hand. The clarity that comes when someone makes an impossible decision for you.

I spent years waiting for a fuckup dramatic enough to make quitting nonnegotiable. But I’d gotten skilled at pulling myself together at the last possible moment. Every disastrous night became a solitary incident, and every stretch of moderation was proof that I really could drink like a normal person. Instead of a true rock bottom, the final years of my drinking were more sad than showy. There was nothing cataclysmic, but more than enough to make me wince repeatedly at the gap between the person I knew I was and the person who kept showing up at open bars.

What finally broke the pattern wasn’t dramatic, either. I attended a handful of helpful AA meetings. Later, I committed to psychedelic work with a guide and sound healer—the kind of experience I approached skeptically at first, fully expecting to feel silly. Instead, I remember thinking, with an embodied clarity that felt almost humiliating in its simplicity: I am allowed to take care of myself. Drinking is the opposite of taking care of myself. In order to fully love my family, I need to love myself.

In the end, I didn’t stop drinking because I finally hated my life enough. I stopped because I’d begun to forgive myself—and to believe I might actually deserve a life with less chaos and shame.

The real surprise is that my life feels so much fuller now. When I was contemplating getting sober, I expected it to drain the color out of things—that I’d be doomed to a boring, sterile existence. This hasn’t happened. If anything, I feel more alive than I did when I was drinking.

I also feel like I’m finally walking a path that’s actually mine. I show up as more myself now—less performance, less anticipating what someone wants from me, more honesty about what I feel and who I actually am. People tend to meet that authenticity with the same energy. I’m not spending so much time managing what I reveal. I’m just there.

That said, I still struggle at cocktail parties. Not long ago I was at one where everyone around me seemed to be letting loose and having a great time, and I felt genuinely tempted to have a drink—not for the first time, and probably not the last. I left earlier than I might have otherwise, and woke up the next day with zero regrets, which was its own kind of proof.

I’m more rooted in the decision now than I used to be, but rooted doesn’t mean immune. If I’m having a bad day and don’t feel up to an event with alcohol around, I try not to go.

There was one night, early on, when I looked at my husband during dinner, started angry crying, and told him I was fucking done with this. That it was too hard to be alone in my own mind at that hour, with two demanding kids underfoot, without a drink to take the edge off.

In that moment, the alcohol-induced haze felt so much more familiar than sitting with my own feelings. Why was I doing this to myself? Was I seriously expected to white knuckle my way through life from now on?

Ethan gave me space, but also some tough love. He’d been on his own sober journey, so he knew firsthand that the early days are the hardest, and he told me I owed it to myself to get through them before deciding anything. He reminded me that I was one of the most stubborn, disciplined people he knew—and suggested this might finally be a productive use for those qualities.

So I kept going. And he was right. The first thirty days were by far the hardest for me. After that, the benefits started to compound. I committed to a new workout routine, set better boundaries at work, and continued to integrate the lessons from my psychedelic experiences. Eventually, my alcohol-free identity became more solid.

Self-trust, self-love, and self-respect. My mornings are so much clearer. I no longer wake up conducting an investigation into what I said, whether I hurt anyone’s feelings, or if Ethan is still angry at me. I still wake up tired—I have two young children, and forty does not guarantee a luminous dawn—but I don’t wake up ashamed.

I’m also calmer and more present with my kids. Not all the time, because they remain committed to testing the outer limits of my nervous system, but much more often. I feel like I’m giving them the best of me now, rather than whatever scraps were left over.

And with the brain space sobriety has given me back, I’ve finally started pursuing something I’ve wanted since elementary school: writing. Not journaling or occasionally starting a draft I’d abandon after a few pages, but actually finishing things. Since I stopped drinking, I’ve written a novel and a half and started publishing personal essays. I never would have had the nerve for that kind of exposure when I was still so preoccupied with everyone else’s perception of me.

I’m no longer spending my creative energy maintaining a persona. I get to spend it making something.

You don’t have to wait until alcohol has destroyed your life. And you don’t have to prove your problem is worse than anyone else’s. The line between this is fine and this is a problem is almost entirely internal, and only you can draw it for yourself. What are you drinking to avoid? What are you trying not to feel?

Also, you don’t have to solve forever today. Try one day. Then thirty. Then sixty. Once the fog of shame starts to lift, it will be much harder to go back to your old way of living.

And forgive yourself in advance for however many attempts it takes. I had two decades of false starts before one finally stuck. Every one of those failed tries felt like proof I couldn’t do it. In hindsight, they were actually the opposite. Each one gave me new clues about what I was running from, which made it harder to lie to myself the next time. If you slip, that doesn’t mean you’re back at zero. You know more than you did before—and you’re still paying attention.

Thank you for sharing, Rachel! We look forward to connecting with you in the comments.

My Sobriety Story with Rachel

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